Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Poster Trends: Visual Puns & Metaphors (part V)

The Phallic variation

These are just shameless, aren't they?

This is something that's only done with comedies. Or, in the case of Shortbus, sexually explicit indie films about nothing else other than having sex and talking about sex. I haven't seen it, but I've heard it's pretty terrible.

Hot Fuzz is a sort of loving parody of cop movies, particularly buddy cop movies (Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, etc), so the use of phallic symbolism is there to poke fun at the inherent (mostly unintentional) homosexual overtones that you'll find in the typical buddy cop movie. Hot Fuzz is fantastic, by the way. Not only is it funny, but it's a worthy entry into the very genre it's mocking (much in the way that Shaun of the Dead was funny, but also just a great zombie movie).

Mr. Woodcock is not so much using a phallic symbol as a... testicular (?) symbol, but it applies nonetheless. The other two movies are just bad sex farces.

All in all, I think these five posters are an accurate representation of how often this particular visual pun gets any attention from me. It's as if I've done some sort of poll, and the results are:

Only one in five movies that use the Phallic variation are actually worth my time.